MAKING IT TOGETHER: A Survival Manual for Executive Families

More floundering than guidance. The Kozmetskys (Business, Univ. of Texas) founded their own company to help individuals beset by excessive career demands, and teach a coping course to graduate business school students. They believe in advance preparation, which is fair enough. But their recommendations seem to boil down mostly to better communication within families, support for one's spouse, a well-developed sense of self-esteem, and some judicious goal setting: hardly enough material to fill an entire book. They wind up resorting to Alvin Toffler's warnings about the rate at which things are changing--or, irrelevantly, advising that the executive examine the data upon which he makes his office decisions. And they fill the noticeable gaps of genuine information with capital-heavy shorthands (like IT for information technology, US for the committed relationship, ME for the self-esteemed individual). A ""balanced"" executive family, we are informed, has a protective framework from which the individual is free to spring--or not spring-into a social role outside the family. And, luckily, the ""potential for career conflict"" in the dual-career couple ""need not represent an insurmountable problem."" Facile.